


Human Nature

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Gen, Guns, Non-Canonical Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 03:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5613136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As they try to escape a world crumbling to pieces around them, the Leverage team discovers that they cannot deny their basic natures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Nature

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirenofodysseus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirenofodysseus/gifts).



> Thank you for playing with us again - I hope you enjoy this!

They decided to retreat into the mountains when the world finally blew itself to hell, pulling back to the largest and most isolated of Eliot’s safe houses. It had gone against every instinct they had as team and family to run from the suffering that was suddenly everywhere and escalating with each passing second, but Nate and Eliot had both agreed that this time their own survival would have to come first.

“We don’t have enough information,” Nate said during the final arguments over what they would do next, and even before they’d fled Portland, fixing that problem had fallen to Hardison. The internet as they all knew it had died in the first wave of destruction, but for all their blustering and pronouncements of control, governments had universally failed to bring the dark net to heel. It was there that much of the fate and future of the world as the Leverage team understood it would be decided.

Seeing them safely through the fighting and out into open countryside would be Eliot’s job, and the sight of twin Glocks riding a worn shoulder holster more than anything else had impressed on the others how serious things were. He allowed Nate to carry, and Sophie after a quick argument which she won by shooting the eye out of a Jack of Diamonds clipped to the edge of one of Nate’s book cases. “No faster way to a Texan’s wallet,” she’d quipped, flipping the .380 and offering it butt-first to Eliot for his inspection.

He’d been prepared to argue with Parker, but the thief had charged all three of her tasers with the last of the electricity, and saw any kind of gun as overkill.

_When she’d acquired tasers number two and three was a discussion for another time, and Nate and Eliot each independently vowed to have it with her when that right time finally presented itself._

All it took was one shared look for hitter and hacker to understand that Hardison would have been more comfortable handling a pouch full of pissed off scorpions than any sort of firearm. “Stay close to Parker,” Eliot told him, knowing that whatever might be waiting for them outside the walls of the brew pub, Parker would die before she let anything happen to Hardison.

And Parker wasn’t planning on dying anytime soon.  
*************************************  
For all her bluster and bravado, Sophie had been half hoping Eliot would disassemble her gun and insist they leave it behind in pieces on the kitchen counter. The look of respect and acceptance in his eyes when he handed her back the weapon without comment was simultaneously one of the most seductive and horrifying things she’d ever experienced.

As the men gathered around Hardison’s smart phone to review the latest ‘credible information’ one final time, Sophie drifted to a break in two boards nailed up to keep what little security they’d been left by the packs of looters and desperate ordinary citizens looking for any relief they could find. The first few hours had been a nightmare. Eliot had acquired a rifle from somewhere, and driven off waves of the determined and the desperate while the rest of them barricaded themselves in.

“Once we’re gone,” Eliot had explained when Sophie and Hardison had argued for sharing out what they could, “they’ll get in here quick enough. If we tip our hand now as to what’s in here, we lose what little time and space we have to collect our things and hit the road.”

A young woman was making her way down the sidewalk in front of the pub, tears streaming down her face, her bright hair a tangle around her shoulders. Every couple of steps she would flinch at the sounds of glass breaking, gunshots, or the sudden looming presence of predators who would think nothing of picking her clean if she had anything to offer.

Two such bottom-feeders closed in on the girl even as she watched – crowding her against the wall of the pub. Sick at heart, Sophie clenched her hands into tight fists. Eliot had already lectured all of them on how they were going to have to suspend a good deal of their empathy in order to get out of the city in one piece, but this sort of thing taking place on their own doorstep? It would not stand.

She was turning, her mouth open to alert the others to what was going on, when a screech of metal against polished concrete alerted them to Parker forcing the barricaded door open far enough to allow her to slip out. “Dammit, Parker!” Eliot yelled. He bolted after her, but Sophie reached the door first. She felt him scrabble for a hold on her sleeve as she forced herself through the small gap Parker had left. “Sophie no!” she heard him say, but the decision had already been made, and for once Sophie was in no mood to gainsay their thief.

Not this time.

Parker had already driven the woman’s attackers back with a flurry of kicks and punches that would have done Eliot proud if the hitter hadn’t still been trying to force his way out of the pub. Understanding the appropriate division of labor, Sophie went for their victim. The young woman was on the ground, body curled protectively around a tiny bundle that squalled angrily when Sophie touched it. _Bollocks,_ she thought, reaching to check the mother’s pulse. “Parker – get over here!”

The thief was at her side in an instant, with Eliot and Nate reaching them a moment later just as Sophie was passing her the baby. Nate moved towards Parker as though he were going to take custody of the infant, and Parker visibly recoiled. The mastermind immediately raised his hands in a placating gesture, but Sophie suddenly had much bigger things to worry about.

“I don’t have a pulse,” Eliot said, his fingers pressed to the side of the girl’s neck. His expression was worried as he looked up at her. “Can you do CPR?”

Sophie nodded automatically, and between the two of them she and Eliot got the young woman on her back on the sidewalk. “You take the chest compressions,” Eliot told her. “I don’t want to complicate thing by potentially breaking one of her ribs.” Nodding again, Sophie got into position – fixing her hands the way she’d been taught, and finding the proper spot on the chest to begin thirty quick, sharp, compressive movements.

 _1…2…3…4…_  
***************************************  
Nate Ford didn’t have to be a genius to understand that arguing about the fate of the baby currently nestled in Parker’s arms was pointless. The thief had clearly made up her mind about things, and if Nate was suddenly the sort of person that could turn his back on a helpless infant in a situation like this, he decided that was information they were all better off not knowing. “Get inside!” he snapped at Parker, settling into a watchful stance and preparing to give Sophie and Eliot whatever cover they needed.

In the end that wasn’t much. No more than five minutes passed before Nate heard a quiet sob from Sophie and turned from warning off a couple of curious teenagers to see that both his teammates had given up. Eliot met his gaze briefly, then reached across to take Sophie by the shoulder. “Soph, come on. We’ve got to get back inside.”

Holstering his own revolver, Nate stepped in. She tensed instinctively at his touch, then relaxed and allowed him to help her to her feet. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, including them both in her heartsick gaze.

“It’ll be easier once we get out of the city,” Nate told her, silently praying that he was right, and that Eliot would have enough grace to let the lie stand if he wasn’t.

“Besides,” the hitter said, chivvying them both back towards the pub, “you no longer have a choice. You just made us that baby’s only chance.”  
*******************************************  
Eliot’s fear for what fate – and Parker – had dropped into their lives was shoved into the deepest, darkest part of his soul he could manage. Reminding the others of what they were going to be facing trying to get out of Portland and how much harder that was going to be toting an infant wouldn’t make the situation any better. They knew the odds. They knew the difficulties.

They didn’t care. And in the privacy of his own mind Eliot could admit that the only reason he did was that his teammates had given him the luxury of caring. He didn’t have to decide to leave a helpless baby alone to die on the street just to give himself and the people closest to him an edge.

The question of who was going to be responsible for the baby as they made their way through the city had fortunately been settled by the time he followed Nate and Sophie back into the pub. “Very, ah, Celtic Parker,” Sophie said – her expression wavering between stunned and impressed.

“Hardison rigged it,” the thief announced proudly. Somehow – and Eliot would have freely admitted, had anyone asked, that his brain was too overloaded to work out _how_ \- hacker and thief had jury-rigged a baby sling with what looked like one of the pub’s table cloths, bound with pieces of one of Parker’s climbing harnesses.

The question of whether or not she could fight with a baby strapped to her body was dancing on the tip of Eliot’s tongue, but he swallowed it down. Fear was holding him back, driving him to question, fact-check and then question again. They were walking into a situation where he wouldn’t be able to protect all of them, and while he trusted each of them to do their part, there was still a tiny part of the hitter’s soul clinging to the belief that they somehow shouldn’t have to. If he looked a little bit harder…a little bit longer…

“We’re out in fifteen minutes,” he announced to the room at large. Waiting wasn’t going to change anything. Even the presence of the baby wouldn’t stop the team from doing what they needed to do. No matter what trouble they encountered, Parker would die before letting anything happen to the newest member of their family.

And Parker had no intention of dying today.


End file.
